Darren Criss (#4) with Team StarKid

With our criteria shifted back to artistic accomplishment in theater, dance, comedy and opera this year, our task got infinitely tougher. Because while the number of performing venues grows at a steady rate, the increase in the number of noteworthy artists seems to grow exponentially. For everyone we name on the list below, we had to leave off five, an embarrassment of riches for Chicago. We made a conscious effort to introduce a meaningful number of new faces to the list this year; the necessary absences should not be construed as a loss of worthiness as a consequence. We often find trends when we do the research these lists require; this year we’re starting to see a more meaningful effort to redefine performance itself in the internet age, from the runaway success of StarKids, to the more calculated endeavors of Silk Road. So what defines a “player”? Consider it some complex stew of career achievement, recent “heat” and, in some cases, rising stardom.

Written by Zach Freeman, Brian Hieggelke, Sharon Hoyer and Dennis Polkow

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Larry Grimm and Danny McCarthy/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

A nervous inventor (Larry Grimm) pitches his latest creation to a smarmy business executive (Danny McCarthy) in the confines of a metallic negotiation room that gives off the claustrophobic feeling of an inner chamber in a giant machine (scenic design by John Dalton).  It’s a creation he breathlessly claims will change not just the world, but our very perception of the EVERYDAY. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Anna C. Bahow

RECOMMENDED

The best plays break down easily to the basics: characters, conflict and the truth. the side project’s site-specific latest is light on frills, but heavy on what’s important: the basics.

Artistic director Adam Webster’s creative tribute to Jarvis Square, the group’s home for the last ten years, “Cut to the Quick” places six short plays in local storefronts. Sometimes it works; “Ceremony” uses Charmer’s coffee shop effectively, detailing the efforts of newly minted stepbrothers Cory (baby-faced Ty Baumann) and James (a frat-a-licious yet truly creepy Dillon Kelleher) to bond. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from A Red Orchid:

Please join us for our 2011-2012 Season!

Recently touted as Chicago’s best theatre by Chicago Magazine, A Red Orchid invites you to Join us for our 19th fearless season. Featuring existential terror, skewed family values, a mysterious co-worker, bad manners, tangled love, creative angst, a world in revolt, and a butcher with a secret…you are sure to laugh uproariously even as you gasp in astonishment.  With three pitch-black comedies, a World Premiere and a Chicago Premiere, you won’t want to miss a single show!   Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Erica Jaree

RECOMMENDED

Sometimes returning home can be hard. Especially when your siblings greet you by bashing your knees with a crowbar. After three years away in LA, Rick (Christopher Chmelik) arrives at a trashed vacant office in his hometown for a violent game with his two brothers: the stoic Peter (Walter Briggs) and the goofily vacuous Kent (Ryan Bourque). Gory action viscerally personifies familial struggles, replacing subtle emotional sniping with a knee to the face. And the blood does flow. Especially after Rick’s employer, an aging Chuck Norris-type (Danny Goldring in a tour de force), shows up to join the melee. Much of Brett Neveu’s uber-dark, fast-paced script seems like a collection of secret rules and inside jokes, but director Duncan Riddell, along with his dynamic cast, gives the show a loose, flowing feel that makes you feel like you’re in on the jokes, even when you’re not quite sure what they are. (Zach Freeman)

The Inconvenience at A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 North Wells, (773)658-4438. Through March 2.

Francis Guinan and Patrick Andrews/Photo:Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Brett Neveu’s second commission from the Writers’ Theatre follows in a long line of “one last big score” con stories, in which a scam artist decides to risk everything on one final, usually epic, con before leaving the game for good. What sets Neveu’s apart is an intimately drawn father-son relationship that anchors the double-dealings.

Sam and Eddie Sisson are a father-and-son pair of grifters who pull small hustles all over an unnamed Midwestern city. On the verge of his eighteenth birthday, Eddie feels he’s ready to strike out on his own, but his father feels otherwise. They agree to do one final con, but its consequences could be greater than a fat payday.

The play’s cons, which were perfected with the help of magician Dennis Watkins, are fun to watch unfold, but the real value of this production, the true mark of good theater, is the human element. Francis Guinan and Patrick Andrews are compelling as the Elder and Younger Sisson. In supporting roles, Joe Miñoso creates memorable, multiple marks for the hustlers to dupe, and Karen Janes Woditsch turns in a heartbreaking performance as Eddie’s drug-addicted mother. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe, (847)242-6000. Through March 20.

Joey Steakley/Photo: Michael Brosilow

There’s something both captivating and yet oddly irksome about The House Theatre’s style. In “Odradek,” the set, lights, puppetry and sound all contribute to a decidedly macabre, expressionistic horror fantasy. The central set piece, a giant staircase, looks like it came straight out of a haunted-house film.

What’s troubling is whether or not this new play by Brett Neveu, the well-produced Chicago playwright, is really worth all the ingenious stagecraft. Adapted from a Kafka short story, the play finds Kyle struggling to come to terms with the divorce of his estranged father and absent mother, and with his father’s new romance with the doctor treating Kyle for self abuse. His only comfort comes in a pile of junk under the stairs, which Kyle brings to life as the monster Odradek.

It’s all rather heavy stuff, and the play plods forward like a leadfooted monster. The persistent disquiet of the play might actually be a lack of nuance. Ultimately the details of the domestic drama hardly rise above cliché and never truly reconcile with the play’s more shocking elements (and they are lovingly rendered). Like the boy protagonist, the production avoids the harsh difficulties of reality, instead escaping into a darkly, sumptuous fantasy. Kyle might have realized his error in the end; I’m not sure about the House. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

The House Theatre at the Chopin Theatre,1543 West Division, (773)769-3832. Through March 5.

Here’s the press release from Writers’:

Writers’ Theatre announces 2010-11 Season

Season to feature world premieres by Keith Huff and Brett Neveu,
Shaw’s Heartbreak House and Masteroff,
Bock and Harnick’s She Loves Me

Artistic Director Michael Halberstam,
William Brown and Gary Griffin slated to direct

Glencoe, IL—Writers’ Theatre Artistic Director Michael Halberstam and Executive Director Kathryn M. Lipuma announce the company’s 19th season, which includes Joe Masteroff, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s She Loves Me, directed by Michael Halberstam with an all-star Chicago cast; the world premiere of Brett Neveu’s Do The Hustle, directed by William Brown; and George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House, directed by William Brown.  As a limited engagement, currently available only to Writers’ Theatre Subscribers and Members, Gary Griffin will direct the world premiere of Keith Huff’s The Detective’s Wife. Read the rest of this entry »

By Emily Torem

Jesse Weaver’s “The Artist Needs a Wife,” slated for its world premiere at the side project theatre this week, is not a play to see if you’re feeling low. It’s about “trying to imagine what life would be like if you were a complete and utter failure,” says the Virginia-born playwright whose career is anything but—his last production at the side project, where he is an ensemble member, “On My Parents’ One Hundredth Wedding Anniversary,” drew critical raves. The plot of “Artist” centers on “fairly fucking old” washed-up artists: Mott, a DJ and Freud, a painter, along with Freud’s discarded muse, known only as “Whore.” The characters live in a futuristic world of Weaver’s imagination. “When I started writing it, I didn’t know much about DJing. It looked so cool and so hip. I was wondering: this art form seems so new and so uniquely of our time, what is it going to be like in 50 years? Are these guys going to be mixing in old folks homes in 2070?” We chatted with Weaver over the phone and via email from Virginia—he’s currently living in Ireland, where an earlier version of this play appeared at the Dublin Fringe Fest—to get some insight into his work.

What inspired you to write a play about failure?
I was in my mid-twenties [when I started writing it]. Living in my friend’s basement apartment—especially when you’re working in Chicago theater where everyone has to have a day job—there’s this feeling of, “Oh my god, I’m going to be 50 and doing [this] the rest of my life. In your mid-twenties, you’ve been sort of written a blank check. [You’ve been told] you’re very talented and you’re very cool and the world’s going to fall at your feet, and then you [learn] it’s not going to and you start to feel sorry for yourself and are going to end up this crusty old man in the basement—that was a personal feeling that sort of stoked the play. I started sharing these thoughts and found I wasn’t the only one with those feelings. Read the rest of this entry »

Donald Blair and Chris Cantelmi (foreground)/Photo: Johnny Knight

Without even knowing the rest of playwright Brett Neveu’s canon—something I’m loathe to admit given how cherished this homegrown Chicago playwright is—I see “The Last Barbecue,” first presented in Chicago nine years ago under the direction of Ann Filmer and currently being revived by 16^th Street Theater in Berwyn (with Filmer once again at the helm), as something of an exercise and experiment, a play whose ultimate value may have been more beneficial to an up-and-coming playwright than to—dare I say—his audience, especially nine years later.

At its basic, this eighty-minute chamber piece centers around a family (mother, father, son, wife and old girlfriend) and their interactions at a barbecue that never starts and around a reunion that we never actually see. As in Chekhov, the characters don’t necessarily speak with each other as much as they talk to and past one another.  As with Beckett, characters are referenced but never appear, and activities are prepped (a croquet match) but never begin. Read the rest of this entry »